U.S. spy claims like those of Iraqs WMD – Syria

6/13/2005

The Syrian ambassador to the United States strongly refuted Washington's accusations that Damascus has not fully withdrawn its intelligence agents from Lebanon saying the claims are similar to the unfounded pre-war charges that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I would say it's a shame that the world's unique superpower, the United States of America, will degrade itself to this level," Imad Moustapha said on CNN's "Late Edition."

After almost 30 years in Lebanon, Syria has said it had pulled out all military and intelligence personnel after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was assassinated in February.

"The day we completed our withdrawal from Lebanon, the very same day the United States repeatedly continued saying from the very early stages, 'No, Syria has not withdrawn from Lebanon. Syria has agents there. We have information and reports that Syria still has agents there,"' Moustapha said.

"This is untrue. This is just as credible as the story of Iraq's WMDs before the war."

U.S. officials and Walid Jumblatt, Lebanon's anti-Syria Druze leader, have questioned whether all Syrian intelligence officers have been withdrawn.

Last week, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan decided to send a UN verification team back to Lebanon to determine if Syrian intelligence agents are still in the country, officials and diplomats said.

Annan's decision came in the wake of the White House's claims it had intelligence that Damascus had an assassination hit list targeting Lebanese public figures. The information came from "a variety of credible Lebanese sources," a Bush administration official said without naming the sources.

Moustapha said the "hit list" charge came from a Lebanese official who was chastised by the United States several years ago for making anti-American comments.

"The same person who created or fabricated the story about the hit list used to create and fabricate wild stories about the United States of America itself two years ago to a degree that the United States revoked his U.S. visa," he said in an apparent reference to Jumblatt, who he did not name.

"Now this same person who is involved in the political process today in Lebanon has created the story about Syria compiling a hit list," he said.

Jumblatt in 2003 described Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy U.S. defense secretary, as a "virus" and said he hoped the American official would not survive any future attack after his hotel came under rocket attack in Baghdad.